Obi-Wan lay on the bed, supine and lazy, his muscles still stretched and warmed by his morning workout, body still bare after his shower. He turned his head and contemplated the equally bare man sitting propped against the headboard, legs folded and databook in hand.
"Somehow, I never really pictured this when I was little."
Qui-Gon lowered his 'book, moving it beyond the range of the lingering droplets that threatened to fall from his own damp hair. His attention shifted smoothly from text to Padawan, though his gaze was focused a couple feet lower than Obi-Wan's face. "I seem to remember experiencing initial surprise at its proportions, myself."
Delivered so dryly, it took a long moment before Obi-Wan self-consciously shifted his hips. "You know that's not what I'm talking about."
A distracting hand worked to survey the formerly neutral territory of the young man's bicep and forearm. "Then perhaps you could be a little more precise."
He wished he could be more precise. But it was difficult to express, even to a man long the closest of his lovers, and even longer his respected Master, what he could not even define for himself. Just a vague unease. The thinnest sliver of guilt.
Problem was, there wasn't a Darkened thing for him to feel guilty about. After these last two months, so voraciously consumed by diplomatic staring contests and balancing acts, he and his Master had earned every right to take a quiet moment alone, displacing concentrated intensity with equally concentrated contemplation. Yet this siege of peace did nothing to dissolve this odd stain of tension that lay in his mind.
His struggles for clarity only further muddled his thoughts, and he lifted a hand from his chest to wave vaguely at the air. "I meant 'this' as a whole. All of this..." Not able to find adequate words, Obi-Wan fell silent, seeking a calm center.
Qui-Gon's exploring fingers stilled and retreated. He waited in silence until the younger man's body shifted restlessly. "What were you expecting?" he gently prompted.
Obi-Wan shook his head. "I don't know, exactly. Something peaceful. Deliberate." A smile threatened the edge of his serious contemplation. "Austere."
Qui-Gon prefaced his reply with an overly-heavy sigh. "This is what happens when children are raised with formal Temple rituals," he said, leavening with mock disapproval. "Eventually, they expect everything to be neat and clean. Even sex."
Obi-Wan's felt somewhat sheepish. "You get these ideas, when you're a child. Thoughts that stay with you." Thoughts that stayed, at the very least, until they were displaced by new liturgy, one forged over the low heat of another's body. "Besides," Obi-Wan said, smile full-blown, "I rather like rituals. Provided I don't have to sit still for too many hours at a time."
"Mmm. I'd noticed."
"I thought you might have," Obi-Wan said, and stretched slowly, until his shoulders eased and his ankles cracked. "But whoever's to blame for my preconceptions, this still isn't the sort of thing I expected. Passion, yes. But not to this degree. Not for a Jedi."
The 'book abandoned, Qui-Gon shifted to lie on his side, parallel to his student. "We're not trained to be automatons, Padawan. We're intended to be something more than good little drones that simply plug into the Force whenever something needs fixing."
"But sometimes it feels like that. Like when you listen to the words of the Code. Really listen, like you're hearing it for the first time. 'There is no Passion; there is Serenity.'"
"It's a maxim, Obi-Wan. A convenient philosophical abbreviation. Which is one reason it's so limited. And so open to interpretation."
"Which you delight in." For when it came down to thoughtful interpretation, he couldn't have asked for a better Master, or one more willing to analyze the Code to the point of blasphemy.
"Of course! A well-trained mind should thrill to the debate, don't you think? Just as the well-trained body thrills to the sparring circle?" Qui-Gon warmed to his subject, and, if he were only wearing a bit more than Obi-Wan's shadow, he would not have looked out of place before a dozen attentive students, scribbling on a holoboard. "Discipline and denial are not the same thing. One leads to balance, the other to turmoil. Sublimating desire is just as destructive as sublimating anger or fear."
An unexpected frission flared and smoldered, and Obi-Wan wasn't sure whether to laugh or gasp. He settled for a mixture of the two. "Are you suggesting we discipline my passion?"
"Such a chore," Qui-Gon smiled, and set a hand to caressing Obi-Wan's pale skin. A shiver sketched down his body at the contact. "But first you need to feel your passion without fear."
So easy to say, and so much harder to accomplish. "But don't you ever feel a moment's guilt? For catering to a feeling? For ignoring the proscriptions of the Code?"
"You're skilled at the art of logic. And that's your asset, not mine. But your conclusions shouldn't always be so rigorous." Fingertips echoed his words, painting his punctuation onto a willing canvas. "You're in need of a lesson, my Padawan."
"A lesson?"
Qui-Gon nodded. "Close your eyes."
Obi-Wan complied readily enough, though he was more than a little curious. Closing his eyes would hardly hinder his perceptions. He didn't need his eyes to feel the mattress dip at his right side, to hear rustle of skin against fabric, or to sense his Master's Force-bright presence kneeling beside him. With the barest effort, he anticipated Qui-Gon's touch before it landed on his forehead, blurring away the crease at his brow.
"Relax. You act like you're expecting an attack," the other man said in mild rebuke.
"Overtraining," Obi-Wan murmured.
"Wasn't there something in your training about trusting my judgment?"
Still voluntarily blind, he smiled. "I'm sorry, Master."
"Don't apologize, Obi-Wan. Just lay still and breathe, slow and deep. No meditative formalities; no reaching for the Force. Just breathe." The patient voice that had calmed the energy of a hyperactive teenager hadn't lost its efficiency in the intervening years, and Obi-Wan's breath deepened. He heard the call of the Force, soft but siren-clear, and left it resonating around the edges of his mind, his focus instead on the coolness of the air he inhaled, on the warmth of its release, and the pattern of the exchange.
Then the touches came.
At first it was a bare, skimming contact, hardly worth calling a touch. It brushed over the fine hairs on his arms, going against the grain in a way that brought goosepimples to the surface as his skin reflexively begged for more.
Obi-Wan couldn't help but look for the pattern, to try and find the path that Qui-Gon was following, but there was little rhyme and less reason to where his hands chose to linger. The fingers that dragged curiously slow over the hollow of his throat, until he couldn't have swallowed even if his mouth hadn't been desert dry, seemed to care little for lingering on the planes of his chest. The irregular interlock of muscle and rib bones held some fascination for his Master that Obi-Wan couldn't begin to guess at. He should have been laughing, shaking as over-ticklish nerves were deliberately triggered; instead, he counted along as fingers delineated ribs down his right side, up his left. His hands were lifted from the sheets so Qui-Gon could trace bracelets over the thin skin of his wrists, parting his fingers to expose the skin in between. Direct touches laid at the center of his palms made Obi-Wan's hands curl and clutch like a newborn's.
It was haphazard; it followed no known precedent, and Obi-Wan didn't like it. Maybe his body liked it. His body might take each stroke to heart, like a clean, tight-stretched canvas drinking in wet brushwork. But that didn't mean his diligently trained mind had to like the strengthening call, the one that came not from the Force around him, but from the living Force inside him. He didn't even have to acknowledge it. He could listen instead to the sounds drifting through the open window, to the muted wash of seawater on rock, and the swish-skitter of the flying creatures crying their hunger to the waves. He could feel the fresh air filtering in and chilling the last shower-damp strands of hair, and that same air could carry these feelings away in its intangible arms. He would let them go, will them to go, and be left pure and empty and Jedi.
But he wasn't a Jedi.
Not yet.
Hands framed his face, tilting and posing until Obi-Wan saw the pinks and oranges of light through his eyelids. Fingers studied him in minute, intense detail from eyelashes to jaw to mouth, paying such attention to the lace of lines on his lips that he wondered what secrets were written there. Which was a ridiculous thought; it was just a face, just his face, and there was nothing there that a bedside lamp or the rising sun could illuminate, most certainly nothing that Qui-Gon hadn't seen there for years.
Obi-Wan felt as skittish as a thoroughbred, quivering with frustrated energy his first time at the starting gate. Something had to give, something had to break, and he'd lay odds on it being his control. Point made and lesson learned, he would concede the game to Qui-Gon. No, he'd have to go further than simple admission. He would concede himself to Qui-Gon. Expurgate this tension by turning it back on the source. He reached up with open hands, looking for skin to touch, for hair to snarl.
Qui-Gon abandoned his caresses and sat back on his heels, intercepting the searching hands with his own. Mirror images of nerve and callus met, fingers entwined, and Qui-Gon rocked forward, driving Obi-Wan's elbows into the yielding mattress. Held so securely in place, bearing his teacher's weight, Obi-Wan didn't even think to try for his freedom.
"No," Qui-Gon said, and his breath broke the tableau. The pressure on Obi-Wan's arms relented, and his hands were brought to rest on the cool fabric above his head. "Put your hands down. Keep them there."
Obi-Wan spoke instinctively, without the censor of thought. "I can't."
"Of course you can." If the words were harsh, then Qui-Gon's half-smile smoothed away their sting. "I wouldn't ask you for something you couldn't do."
"Then help me. Bind me." Obi-Wan's fingers moved restlessly, but hands remained obediently against the sheets.
Qui-Gon shook his head. "You're a Jedi. What bonds could hold you?"
Frustration offered strength if Obi-Wan chose to rebel, but he grappled for the headboard instead, his fingers making their own anchor among the rails. Never let it be said that Qui-Gon Jinn didn't choose his student's lessons wisely. Had Obi-Wan been asked for his freedom once, he could have relinquished it willingly, if not graciously. A single moment's choice, then he would have been free to rail against his requested restraints until his triceps burned from the exertion. But to lay still of his own volition, to be faced with the same exact choice with each passing minute... why did it take such energy to do nothing?
Qui-Gon's fingers moved down Obi-Wan's sides, swept over the angled rise of his hipbones, and burrowed in the heated tangle of curls at the base of his cock. Only Obi-Wan's training, designed to give him the patience of a diplomat and the discipline of a general, allowed him to swallow his cries. Even if it did require the prick of an incisor to remind his tongue of silence.
Something was wrapped tight, deep inside. Now he needed something wrapping him tight on the outside. Fingers settled around his cock, holding him in the gentle grip of a man used to modulating the strength of over-large hands. A far too gentle grip; he wasn't made of porcelain. Hadn't he proven he wouldn't crack under a heavy hand? He'd been hardened by the glare of a hundred alien suns, he'd guarded his Master's back from the fire of a hundred angry blasters, and he could take more than this. Feet flat on the bed and knees raised, he lifted his hips from the clinging cotton sheet and sought more from those cautious fingertips.
Infuriatingly, they retreated. "All this impatience. There's no need for you to strain so, Padawan."
"I need more," he insisted.
"No. You need exactly what I'm giving you."
Yes, of course. Of course, that was the point. Qui-Gon was giving this lesson on passion, and Obi-Wan was supposed to be learning. Wasn't this to be a simple lesson? There were only two barriers. Two restrictions. He was forbidden to relegate his emotions to the Force, and he was incapable of holding them dormant inside. Qui-Gon's hand stroked up and Obi-Wan's blood surged to follow, Qui-Gon's hand stroked down and the shielding skin peeled further away from the wet crown. There was a third option; there had to be. There was always another option. He tried to ignore the rhythm of the hand, and focused his thoughts on the puzzle before him, on the lesson itself.
Lips corralled the head of his cock, and a tongue stole a taste. Then Qui-Gon pulled away, leaving cold air to dry the mark left by his mouth.
Oh, another path, a third path. He was trying to think; he had to figure this out on his own. It was coming and he knew it was coming, but he didn't know what to do with it. He gripped the rails of the headboard until sweat slickened the interface between skin and wood and friction didn't exist. His hands might have slipped, breaking his self-willed restraints. But the only bonds that could hold Jedi were those made by Jedi, and his hands held stubbornly, as they had to. As they were expected to.
"Master, please..."
Qui-Gon worked a hand between Obi-Wan's thighs, though he spoke with the calm voice of a Jedi briefing the Council. "You must learn to use your passion as a tool. Use it to burn the clutter from your mind. Just as a fire to burns the dead grass from a prairie. Live in a single, clean moment, Padawan."
He latched onto Qui-Gon's words, wrapping himself in them like they were swaddling cloth. They gave him something to hold on to, they held onto him in return, and still Qui-Gon's fingers moved on his body. With one hand on his cock and the other dipping around and behind his balls, he hunted down and preyed on the sweetest spots.
And Obi-Wan lived in the moment.
He could feel the bed under the soles of his feet and he felt his toes curl into the mattress, but he couldn't avoid the shift, the slip that carried him out of time's pervasive grasp. This tension wasn't unusual, this desire wasn't an anomaly. It was the norm. Like a mountaineer acclimating to the air above the snow-line, this thin, sharp edge became safe as a child's cradle. There was no beginning. This had always been. And so he stopped expecting the end. Stopped anticipating the fall. He cried out as fingers entered and opened his body. The future was irrelevant, anxiety lost its definition, and life condensed to fit in a single, quivering drop of rain.
With all time reduced to a single moment, to choose became pointless. His hands fell from the headboard and he lay with arms spread wide across the mattress, fingers cupped around nothing. He was offering and he was sacrifice; he was tied down with air, but could have been nailed through with iron.
The fingers left him, but he only concentrated on the curiously satisfying ache of muscles shifting around the emptiness. His heels were lifted to rest on Qui-Gon's shoulders, but he only thought of how his Master's pulse felt through the thin skin of his ankles. His hips were lifted to Qui-Gon's lap, but he only relaxed at let himself be moved. And although he hadn't asked for it this time, Qui-Gon's voice came again.
"Look at me, Obi-Wan."
He opened his eyes, and the view jumped in time with the pulse of his heart.
He looked so calm, so utterly pleased with the moment, and Obi-Wan wouldn't have thought there was a thing Qui-Gon wanted if it wasn't for the thin trail of sweat making long hair cling to his cheek, or for the vaguely unsettled look in his eyes. If Qui-Gon's smile was a little distracted as his own hard cock rubbed against Obi-Wan, his student forgave him immediately.
And with heat applied in the form of his Master, he flushed as vividly as cherry-red steel, and bent with equal pliancy. Qui-Gon pushed smoothly inside.
And rocked out.
And pushed in.
It was so odd, this mix of open bareness and covered shelter. Not an uncomfortable odd, just a different take, a doubling of his vision. A surge and retreat that left his mind stirred and shaking and maybe this was the norm, now. Maybe this was how he was supposed to exist, in these imperfect pulses that made this perfect passion.
The end came up on him in a rush, and Obi-Wan felt twelve again, when everything was startling and he was unable to predict what his body was about to do. But when he'd been twelve, there'd been no Master who would have him, no braid trailing over his shoulder, no confidence that allowed him to simply reach out and fall down and fall into...
And he came with light shimmering in his eyes. No gasp for air. No time to wish. Just affirmation. Qui-Gon's own wet answer echoed deep inside.
And he'd learned his lesson.
Eventually Qui-Gon lifted him away and he came to rest on his side, with his Master settled down behind him. Strong and warm and heavy, he couldn't muster the desire for anything beyond the confines of the bed. He was thoroughly content, yet hummed with an untapped vibrancy; he felt like a newly ignited lightsaber, sublimely powerful but held carefully in check with a warrior's calm. With a priest's peace.
With a Jedi's serenity.